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Achieving marital bliss through PC games (taking suggestions)
whuppins
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
My wife and I canceled our WoW accounts after playing almost since launch. She has expressed an interest in finding a new game that we can enjoy together. I can think of a few broad genres of game that would appeal to her, but not many of them offer much of a two-player experience. Here's basically the entire list of games she's played and their pros and cons:
So that's about as accurate a description of her tastes in games as I can give. The three criteria I'm looking for are:
a.) In line with her tastes as described above;
b.) Playable on a PC (we own two) or, failing that, our NES/SNES/Genesis/PSX. I don't want to buy any new hardware just for this.
c.) Offers something for more than one player at a time. Things like adventure games where we can both contribute count, though true multiplayer experiences are preferred.
Suggestions?
Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Super Mario Brothers: She likes old-school arcadey games where the focus is on high scores and the controls boil down to a joystick and maybe one or two buttons.
River City Ransom: She liked the rpg/action hybrid with simple controls, and I liked the fact that we could play co-op, but I had played it so many times as a kid that we kind of breezed through it and I don't think it made much of an impression on her.
World of Warcraft: She loved exploring a huge, boundless world and playing co-op with me; she didn't like the social aspect (guilds/grouping) or the number-crunching that's involved with optimizing your gear and fighting style.
Final Fantasy VII, Phantasy Star IV: Most JRPGs, old or new, don't hold her attention. While she appreciates games with plots, menu-driven combat (whether it's turn-based or not) is neither exciting nor mentally challenging, and I think the game needs to have one or the other. Most 16- and 32-bit worlds aren't large enough or 'alive' enough to get her interested in exploring them.
Bookworm Adventures: Is a Scrabble-playing bookworm herself, appreciated the simple premise mixed with light strategy/rpg elements.
Portal: Really liked the way it made you think laterally to solve puzzles and the unique approach to storytelling, but got very frustrated because she was never very good with mouse and keyboard and FPS-style action in general.
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People: Currently playing this, she seems to like the humor (she's a fan of Homestar Runner) and puzzle solving pretty well, but the pace of adventure games may not be quick enough to keep her attention.
Half-Life 2: She's intrigued by the immersive quality of the game world and how it's used to drive the narrative, but she's just no good in combat since she struggles with FPS's (and keyboard/mouse controls in general).
The Sims: Thumbs down. She sees it as bland and pointless. I get the feeling that she needs a game with discrete goals and/or some way to chart your progress. If there isn't going to be any conflict/battles, I think there needs to be at least some level of challenge in the form of puzzles, etc.
River City Ransom: She liked the rpg/action hybrid with simple controls, and I liked the fact that we could play co-op, but I had played it so many times as a kid that we kind of breezed through it and I don't think it made much of an impression on her.
World of Warcraft: She loved exploring a huge, boundless world and playing co-op with me; she didn't like the social aspect (guilds/grouping) or the number-crunching that's involved with optimizing your gear and fighting style.
Final Fantasy VII, Phantasy Star IV: Most JRPGs, old or new, don't hold her attention. While she appreciates games with plots, menu-driven combat (whether it's turn-based or not) is neither exciting nor mentally challenging, and I think the game needs to have one or the other. Most 16- and 32-bit worlds aren't large enough or 'alive' enough to get her interested in exploring them.
Bookworm Adventures: Is a Scrabble-playing bookworm herself, appreciated the simple premise mixed with light strategy/rpg elements.
Portal: Really liked the way it made you think laterally to solve puzzles and the unique approach to storytelling, but got very frustrated because she was never very good with mouse and keyboard and FPS-style action in general.
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People: Currently playing this, she seems to like the humor (she's a fan of Homestar Runner) and puzzle solving pretty well, but the pace of adventure games may not be quick enough to keep her attention.
Half-Life 2: She's intrigued by the immersive quality of the game world and how it's used to drive the narrative, but she's just no good in combat since she struggles with FPS's (and keyboard/mouse controls in general).
The Sims: Thumbs down. She sees it as bland and pointless. I get the feeling that she needs a game with discrete goals and/or some way to chart your progress. If there isn't going to be any conflict/battles, I think there needs to be at least some level of challenge in the form of puzzles, etc.
So that's about as accurate a description of her tastes in games as I can give. The three criteria I'm looking for are:
a.) In line with her tastes as described above;
b.) Playable on a PC (we own two) or, failing that, our NES/SNES/Genesis/PSX. I don't want to buy any new hardware just for this.
c.) Offers something for more than one player at a time. Things like adventure games where we can both contribute count, though true multiplayer experiences are preferred.
Suggestions?
whuppins on
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The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is an obvious choice if she likes action/adventure rpgs.
I have next to no knowledge of Sega outside the Sonic games- but those are very fun.
Have you tried bubble bobble? That's a good 2 player game. Geometry Wars is on the PC right? That's fun too.
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=41697
Just be wary of grindfests. :P
Failing that, I'll have to get thinking about the categories there ... but have you considered a newer Nintendo console? Maybe not a Wii, but what about a DS?
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
Actually, I realize now that I will have already played almost any console game that folks may suggest, which diminishes the fun we can have together by quite a bit. So I think I'm going to edit my OP to put more emphasis on the PC side of things. Guild Wars and those free MMOs sound like they may be worth checking out, though I'm a little reluctant to start up a whole new timesink after just quitting WoW. I guess I was looking for something a little more bite-sized; something we could spend a week or two on and then move on to the next thing.
One of the things I was thinking about was Indigo Prophecy, which I've heard good things about but otherwise know next to nothing about. Maybe that's worth hunting down?
Staying with the adventure theme, look into the Longest Journey and its sequel, Dreamfall, as well.
Edit: Oh, Oh! Diablo 2, with expansion. The click-happy combat should please her arcade preferences, whilst the story and world and character building and looting offer up a more satisfying reward than just points. Plus it should be fairly cheap to buy.
Also agreed that this is a wonderful game (which I have played 2-player FAR more than probably is healthy) - but as Tam implied, the original cartridge is a little scarce these days....It is out on the Wii Virtual Console for $10, which is the only other legal method atm besides fighting for a copy on Ebay ($30-60 or more atm).
Yeah, you can, thanks to a large selection of AI henchmen/"heros". Definitely more fun if you're playing with someone else though, and there are some areas that are near-impossible to finish without other humans along unless you're willing to die a lot or get very meticulous with strategy.
My wife and I have actually been playing it for a couple years - definately a lot of fun.
It can be a timesink, but a lot less so than WoW - getting to the max level and getting max armor/weapons is relatively trivial....the challenge is more to find the best loadout of skills, rather than getting phat l00tz. Not that there isn't still stuff to spend vast sums of in-game gold on for pure looks, though.
Between the two, i'd probably recommend you get a couple copies of the Diablo 2 battlechest and/or get Diablo 3 when it releases, given what you mentioned. You might want to consider the Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, or Neverwinter Nights games also.
Sam and Max would prolly be right up her alley if she is liking the Strongbad game.
Also, Diablo 2 is a great recommendation. Simple gameplay, awesome Co-op, and lots of replayability. Just one word of advice, if you are an old veteran to Diablo be sure to slow down for her. Let her take point and do the exploring. I have made the mistake of blowing through the game on auto-pilot with a newbie and they did not exactly enjoy it as much as I did.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
Pros -
1. Co-op works pretty great assuming game is at highest patch level
2. Probably cheap as sin on steam or a similar download service.
3. Legions of over the top enemies, scorpion humanoids with chainguns on each each arm, witches that fly around and shoot laser balls at you, crazy manaics with a giant bomb for a head that run at you, dinosaur mammoth things.
4. Different stage environments each chapter has a theme.
5. From what I remember highly customizable difficulty, last time I co-opped part 2 I was playing with someone who wasn't so hot at pc games and we did just fine on normal difficulty.
6. It's a bit older so you don't need the beefiest computer in the world to run it.
7. Vehicles, there is great joy in rolling around in a giant hamster ball that has spikes on it.
8. Hordes of enemies, I know I mentioned this early but it seriously (*haha*
9. Fun weapons, kamikaze enemy seeking parrots that carry bombs, a cannon ball launcher etc.
10. You can save progress and come back to it so you don't have to finish it in one sitting, my last play through I think took about 2-3 hours a night spread over maybe 2-3 nights.
Cons -
1. Very violent in the cartoony sense, and by that I mean enemies exploding into a fine red mist as opposed to something graphic (ala soldier of fortune).
2. This might be a co-op bug im not sure but it seemed that each boss was supposed to have some kind of death animation but after we beat them it just moved to the next scenario/theme.
3. Requires a minimum level of FPS skill, if she is one of the type that gets motion sick and usually ends up spinning around in a circle while aiming at the floor while lethargic house cats paw her to death this game might not work out.
Steam/PSN/XBL/Minecraft / LoL / - Benevicious | WoW - Duckwood - Rajhek
Puzzle Pirates can be kind of fun.
I just don't want to say, "Play this!" since everyone's different
You can probably get this for cheap and it is fun for 2 people, because some of the puzzles are kinda hard and require internet research among other things.
A really fun game to play together, because it is more about working with the clues and thinking about the riddles, than just point and click.
This is very good advice - I had already finished the game multiple times by the time I got my wife to give it a try, and I definitely had to make a conscious effort to keep myself from just plowing through and making it very frustrating for her.
It's very similar when I think about something like Diablo II. D2 is very similar to WoW for obvious reasons, and I think her experience would be pretty much the same -- she'd like killing monsters, but she wouldn't want to learn which skills to take or whether 5 defense is better than 3 strength, or whatever. Managing inventory, selling drops, balancing skill points -- she sees all these things as barriers between the player and the gameplay, not added levels of depth.
This is not to say she wants everything to be simplistic. Portal is a good example, she loved its gameplay even though there was nothing to kill because of the mental challenge it presented. But that challenge was in the form of logic puzzles and spatial reasoning, not number crunching.
If I could, I would respond to everything, but I don't want to muck up my own thread. I've read and considered every suggestion, though, even if I don't specifically mention it. Thank you very much for all the posts and please keep them coming!
Seems like she has really contradictory preferences. (Psh, women! amirite?) She seems to want a big explorable world (like wow), but a system that does not require her to build her own character (Sort of like a JRPG).
I am really stumped on what could work in those parameters. I think Zelda games might be up her alley, but they are not co-op.
If you want to give it a try you may want to check out the Heroes of Might and Magic series. I knew lots of girls that liked it because it was an RTS-esque game, but without the ZERG RUSH mentality. It would give her lots of time to familiarize herself with the controls, and it is easy to play co-op on Hot Seat.
Also, Girls usually love Katamari Damacy
Heh, I agree that a lot of her preferences run counter to each other (which I guess is why I'm having so much trouble to begin with), but keep in mind that I'm not looking for a single game that meets all these criteria. Hopefully, I can come up with many games that we can string together over the next few weeks, months, or years. I'm certainly not holding out hope for "Pac-Man meets Oblivion meets Grim Fandango meets Half-Life, and it's all 2-player co-op" (although, if that exists, then holy shit someone sell me that game).
Also, the exploration thing is meant pretty literally -- I think she's thinking of actually moving through different environments, not just uncovering different tiles on a world map. We'd be riding off to a quest in WoW and she'd often lag behind, trying to line up a perfect screenshot if we came to the top of a particularly picturesque hill, etc.
Also, if you're down for a decent two player brawler: Hunter the Reckoning was pretty good. Lots of zombie murder and decent atmosphere.
If you're willing to go to a different system, I've been hearing Rave reviews about Castle Crashers on 360.
And if you're down for just psx, Super Puzzle Fighter 2 is really awesome.
As I recall, there's less math involved in setting up powers than tweaking gear in WoW, the character creation options are utterly absurd, and super jump may be the most fun travel power in the known world. Grouping is pretty loose and easy (or it was when I last played it), and you can adjust your missions to be easier or harder as fits your playstyle, time and desires. 5 classes to pick from with a wide variety of powers, and a badge system that rewards exploring, fighting, questing and a wide variety of other things.
I dunno, if you keep it simple enough Starcraft is pretty accessible. My wife is a definite non-gamer, and she was having fun cranking out hordes of basic units (Terran Marines, ZERG RUSH) and mowing shit down. Granted, I helped her out by ferrying a Probe and setting up a little pocket of cannons to protect her from enemy rushes, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.
Oh, and speaking of games my wife enjoyed - WORMS. Just make sure you can laugh if you accidentally torch each other with the flaming sheep or whatever.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
It's kind of a combo of Harry Potter and simplistic WoW - you run around, do quests, and learn spells for a certain school of magic. You also collect cards, and those cards are your spells. You decide what cards go in your deck, and that makes up your weapon arsenal when you fight monsters. It's aimed at kids, so there's not much in ways of chat/interface, and much emphasis on pets, the way items look and such, but it's pretty easy to follow and is pretty fun to play. I participated in the beta and I have an account, but I haven't played much since it went live. It's internet only, not something you can buy in the store, but you can give the free trial a whirl (I think it lets you get up to 10 levels).
Like I said, it may be too cartoony, but I enjoyed it, and I know during the beta many adults were playing it more than their kids were.
CoH manages to distract you from how simple it is in the first... I dunno... 20ish levels or so by being really purty and giving you awesome powers. (Seriously, after flight and super speed a freaking horse just doesn't cut it anymore) But eventually it degrades into breaking into the same warehouse over and over again, but this time you are fighting ninjas instead of robots. However, most girls I know have a hell of a time with the costume creator. Just be prepared for her to remake her character about 30 times as she realizes "I dont like these boots..." (... I may have done this. Once. Or twice... alot)
Wizard 101 is the exact same thing over and over again. Which is surprising since it is still fun. But just about every zone is, kill 5 of these guys, talk to this guy, collect 5 crates, talk to another guy, etc etc, boss. The main fun is collecting new cards, gear, and spells. So yea, give the trial a shot, maybe it will be right up her alley.
A somewhat goal driven 2 player RPG that's not overly hard will be hard to find in general. You could play through Baldur's Gate 2 on easy with 2 people, and enjoy the excellent story (and still allow for 4 NPC's), but it's 10 years old and while it's aged well graphicly, it's network implementation didn't age well at all. It's probably better while in the same room. I hear the expansion for NWN 2 is pretty nice, but I don't know if you can play the campaign multiplayer, nor have I played it.
RA3 is coop and launches this week. Totally different from anything you suggested, but it may work.
You could have her start out with a charged bolt sorc. They get powerful pretty early, even if they are kind of shitty later. You can get through normal difficulty no problem with one though.
I wasted sooooo much time on D2....